A New Story Most Thursdays
Hello Friends and Neighbors, and welcome to Thursday Stories. Looking back over my herd of short stories, I realize that more than three dozen of the little rascals have appeared only in print. Some of you may have forked over the dough for this or that literary review, but I don’t expect everyone to buy all of the reviews all of the time. And so, drumroll please, I give you Thursday Stories. I’m not guaranteeing a new story every Thursday, but I will do my best until all the print-only tales have been set free.
This week’s edition of Thursday Stories features Pas De Deux Confined. Pas De Deux Confined first appeared in In Parentheses, published in 2020. Without further ado, I give you another edition of Thursday Stories. I hope you enjoy it.
Pas de Deux Confined
by Marco Etheridge
Loud music filled the room, making it hard to hear anything else. Discordant jazz chords clawed at the woman’s ears, minor sevenths and diminished nonsense that threatened to unravel the last thread of her sanity. The bleating screech of a saxophone turned her thoughts to murder. Yes, I could just kill him. Quicker than a divorce, and I can plead insanity. No jury would ever convict me. The thoughts boiled to rage, and she shouted over the din.
“Michael, will you please turn that crap down? I was talking to you.”
The focus of the woman’s anger, her soon-to-be ex-husband, sat staring out the room’s only window. Without taking his eyes from the world beyond the dirty glass, he raised one hand and clicked the button of a remote control. The room fell mercifully silent. The woman took in a deep breath and blew out a theatrical sigh.
“Did you hear a single word I said?”
Michael spoke into his own reflection.
“Sorry, no, I wasn’t listening. I didn’t even know you were in the room.”
“That is so goddamn typical. In fact, that could be the tagline for our ridiculous marriage.”
The woman drew in another deep breath before more words tumbled from her mouth.
“You wait until we’re trapped in this tiny shithole of an apartment before you decide to tell me you’re having an affair. This is your idea of good timing, the perfect moment for you to come clean? Then you disappear into your fantasy world. Really, Michael? Really?”
The woman paced the tiny space: Three steps, a whirl of hair, three more steps. The gravity of her anger pulled her back and forth between a restricted floor plan and limited options.
The bedroom door had a good slam to it, but then she’d be stuck inside a windowless monk’s cell. The bathroom door was too warped to slam properly. The closet-sized kitchen had no door, so no slam. Besides, the kitchen was his domain, full of his gadgety shit. And nowhere to sit in the kitchen except the godawful vintage stools, which were hers, and all her fault.
No, it was either leap over the mid-century coffee table and onto the lumpy sofa to claw his eyes out or pace the tiny living room. She did not possess enough high moral ground to pounce, so she paced.
“Maybe my mother is right, the evil bitch. Maybe my life is cursed. I should have stayed at home, all boring and safe, married some doofus who teaches at the community college, had a pair of drooling toddlers, one boy, one girl. Sunday dinners with the grandparents, little cousins to play with, a whole tribe of grass-stained kids.”
She stopped at the end of three paces, gave the wall unit a half-assed kick, then turned to glare at her soon-to-be ex-husband. This is all a joke, a sick and unfunny joke. Stuck in a pandemic limbo that has locked down everything, including my divorce proceedings. And who the hell confesses to an affair after the damn divorce papers are filed? Only my stupid husband, the man staring out the window and ignoring me. She snapped her fingers.
“Michael, hello, wakey-wakey. What the hell are you staring at?”
Hands on her hips, she blew at a loose strand of hair, which fluttered and then settled back onto her angry face. He didn’t respond, of course; wouldn’t turn away from his precious view.
That goddamn window was the only reason they’d signed the lease on this four-hundred-square-foot prison cell. A vacant lot across the street gave them a peek-a-boo view of the dirty river. They could barely afford the rent, but everyone bitched about rent in this stupid city. Besides, five flights of stairs saved a gym membership.
The street below the window was empty. The city was wrapped in the eerie stillness of a Sunday morning, but it wasn’t Sunday. It was the middle of a workday or would be if anyone still went to work. The steel doors of the shops were rolled down tight, triple padlocked at the sidewalk; a block-long ribbon of head-high graffiti broken only by crates of produce in front of the Korean grocery.
The streetscape vision of the apocalypse fanned the flames of her anger.
“Michael, if you don’t answer me, there is going to be a domestic violence call in the very near future.”
His response was so typical, so Michael. Still turned to the window, he arched his back, doing that feline thing she once found so irresistible: Michael the Cat-Man. Now it was just infuriating. Without looking at her, he raised an arm from the back of the sofa and pointed out the window.
“Pigeons.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Pigeons. You asked me what I was staring at. I’m watching the pigeons. As long as they’re flapping their wings, they fly like normal birds. Granted, they look like flying sausages, but they manage. Everything changes when they swoop in for a landing. It’s as if they forget how to fly. Their wings are all spread out, and they wobble from side to side, like they’re sliding down a suspended wire and have no idea how to stop. It’s a miracle they don’t slam into the building at full speed.”
“You’re watching pigeons instead of listening to me?”
“No, Sara, I was watching pigeons and listening at the same time. One doesn’t preclude the other. You were questioning the timing of my confession and then went on a rant about living the good life in your boring hometown. You forgot the part where you go on a killing spree after six months of splendid small-town isolation.”
Sara pressed her fists against the savage thoughts beating inside her skull. This was all so unfair. Their divorce was as simple as divorces get. They had barely a pot to piss in and no property to split. There were no grass-stained kids to fight over. It was a parting of ways, nothing more, the result of irreconcilable differences.
Contradictions had brought them together and made them strong. Now, five years later, those contradictions became the conflicts unravelling their marriage. No, had unraveled their marriage: Past tense. It was over except for signatures, which they could not scribble until the courts resumed processing non-essential cases.
She dropped her fists and raised her head.
“Speaking of murder, how are we going to avoid one, specifically yours?”
Michael turned and smiled at her, that impish grin she once loved and now hated.
“You can’t murder me because there’s no way to get rid of the body. I guess you could shove me out onto the fire escape, but I’m sure someone would notice. We’re stuck here for three weeks, minimum. I’d get pretty ripe in three weeks.”
Sara edged around the coffee table and threw herself at the sofa. There was no place else to sit, and she was not up for squatting on the floor. He could move or not, his choice. Cat-quick, Michael slid to the far end, and they faced each other across the no man’s land of the middle cushion.
“The stink might be worth it for the quiet. Dammit, Michael, answer me: Why now? You couldn’t have waited a month, told me after the papers were signed? That’s how the scene is supposed to play out. The lawyer’s office, the papers on a desk; we scribble our signatures, and the divorce is done. Then you lean over with an evil smirk and tell me how you fucked my sister.”
Michael’s face twisted in genuine repulsion.
“That’s disgusting. Your sisters hate me. They’re both fat, and they wear pastels.”
“Unlike my ex-friend Brenda.”
Michael held his hands up in surrender.
“I told you because I didn’t want you hearing about Brenda secondhand. That’s a cliché, worse than your lawyer’s office scenario. And believe it or not, I think Brenda is still your friend.”
“One phone call can fix that, and you can bet that call is at the top of my to-do list.”
“An ex-husband isn’t enough, you want to collect a bunch of ex-friends as well? Some weird reverse Facebook shit? I didn’t lash out at your guy Brett.”
Hearing Brett’s name spoken aloud further eroded the high moral ground Sara was clinging to. Brett had been a colossal mistake, sure, but he was a coworker, not one of Michael’s friends. And the distinction matters how? She fell back into the lumps of the sofa.
“Seriously, Michael: Brett and Brenda? For fucksake, is that the best we can do?”
“No, the best we can do is Sara and Michael. That’s the best thing either one of us has ever done. What scares me the most is that it might be the best thing either one of us ever will do.”
Not believing her ears, Sara sat bolt upright.
“No way, you don’t get to segue from confession to reconciliation. We’re getting a divorce, remember?”
Michael shook his head and looked across the tiny living room.
“No, you’re getting a divorce. I’m getting divorced. Big difference. Only one of us is getting what they want.”
“You got Brenda. You didn’t want that?”
“No, not in any permanent way, and neither did she. It was a punctuation point for both of us. Brenda’s on the rebound. I’m on the way to a divorce. In that small meeting point between coming and going, we each needed to matter to someone, if just for a small space of time.”
“A punctuation point? Yeah, that’s clever. Question mark or exclamation?”
“Just questions, Sara, and it’s over, so there won’t be any answers.”
“You two aren’t going to run off to some island paradise?”
“Like Manhattan? No, it never even came up. There was no running, just treading water for a little while. Not like you two and your Paris plans.”
Sara groaned and dropped her face. She muttered between her fingers.
“Low blow, but a palpable hit.”
She raised her head and looked out over the empty street. Paris with Brett; what a disaster that would have been. But she’d come to her senses, broken it off, and made it up with Michael. That was almost three years ago. Two of those years had been good. This last year, not so much. Somewhere things had gone sour. She searched her memory for a wrong turning, some identifiable fork in the road, but there was nothing.
A flash of grey and white caught her eye. A fat pigeon careened out of the sky, wobbling through the late-morning air on a collision course with the roof across the street. At what seemed like the last possible second, the bird broke into a frantic, awkward fluttering of wings and managed to plop onto the graveled roof. Michael was right; it was a miracle there weren’t dead pigeons scattered over the sidewalk.
She watched the ugly thing ruffle its feathers. Apparently satisfied, the pigeon began to strut around in circles, vain head bobbing with every step. Sara turned away to find Michael watching her.
“Why did you never ask me to go to Paris?”
Sara cocked her head, not believing what she was hearing.
“Paris… you and me?”
Michael nodded his head and said nothing.
“Seriously, that’s what you want to know? I… I don’t know why. I guess I thought you’d say no, or that we couldn’t afford it. But we went places. We went to Mexico City, the grand mural tour, remember. I even let you drag me to the Trotsky Museum.”
“Right after we spent the whole morning at the Frida Kahlo house.”
“Which you loved. Don’t make out that you were suffering for my sake.”
Michael laughed and shook his head.
“I try not to suffer for you at all. That was a great trip.”
“Except for being sick on the return flight. You just had to eat in that dive bar the last night. My guts were churning the whole way back.”
“The price for local culture. Go ahead, ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“Ask me if I want to go to Paris with you.”
Sara shook her head and turned back to the window, waiting for the next pigeon to fall.
* * *
Michael crosses without bothering to look. He pauses in the center of the empty street because he can, because there is no one to honk or run him down. He looks up and down the quiet canyon of brownstones, the noon sun overhead, a lone gunfighter with no opponent. He crouches for the draw, an organic cotton grocery bag in each hand, almost drops the newspaper clamped under his arm. No one answers his challenge, and he laughs at himself.
The cacophony of the city is three weeks gone now, and the silence is oppressive. Michael hears the small sounds normally hidden beneath the urban roar. A spring breeze flows off the river and rustles the new-green leaves of the honeylocusts. Pigeons coo on cornices five storeys above him.
Michael lowers one bag to the pavement and scratches the thick stubble on his cheek. His eyes search the upper storey of windows, hoping to catch Sara looking down, but all he sees are sliver-blue rectangles of reflected sky. He blows out a sigh, reaches for his bag, and crosses to the empty sidewalk.
The stairwell pulses with the burrowed life of the building. Music, the blare of televisions, children crying, children laughing; it mixes and echoes as if the noise of the city has sought shelter from the threat of the empty streets.
He trudges up the stairs. The newspaper rustles under his arm. The news of the world is not good. Neither is the news waiting five floors up. The outside world is stuck in a pandemic limbo, lockdowns extended. His inner world is trapped in a tiny apartment where his beautiful wife waits on a stalled divorce he does not want.
The heavy canvas bags pull against his arms, and his quadriceps burn from the long climb. The bags are stuffed with Korean sausage, homemade noodles, fresh vege, and a tub of Missus Park’s special kimchi. The normally taciturn Mr. Park had bemoaned the lack of customers while ringing him up. Business bad, Mr. Michael. People scared. Michael had nodded, told the old man he was sorry to hear it.
He and Sara eat well, pandemic or no. Michael makes sure of that. She will miss his cooking if nothing else. He loves her to distraction, but not for her culinary skills. Sara, who does so many things so well, can barely boil water.
From habit, he takes the last flight of stairs in a quick shuffle: Always finish strong. Michael turns down the hallway and pauses outside the apartment door. He lowers the groceries to the worn parquet and digs for his keys. Standing with keyring in hand, he repeats a mantra to himself: Calm and neutral, calm and neutral. Do not cause a conflict.
Michael does not insert a key into the lock. He looks down the hallway, sees the top of the stairwell. Sure, just leave the groceries and go. But where? Back to Brenda? That was stillborn from day one.
Brenda with her heartbreak, and you with your shock of pending abandonment. The two of you mixed mutual emptiness as if it would create something more than a bigger void. At least you were both smart enough to see it for what it was. The goodbyes were heartfelt, sad, and irrevocable.
His hand moves as if of its own volition, fitting keys to each of the three locks, twisting open the bolts. Michael watches the movements of his fingers, feels the keyring fall back onto the pocket of his jeans. Goaded into action, he lifts the grocery bags, shoulders open the door and disappears inside.
“How was the shopping?”
Michael bends the canvas bags to the floor and relocks the deadbolts. Sara is leaning against the wall beside the bedroom doorway. She’s barefoot, wearing jeans and a loose sweater with a low neckline. Michael notes the lack of pajamas as a good sign.
“It was okay. Give me a minute.”
Holding his hands like a surgeon waiting to scrub, he disappears into the tiny bathroom. He lathers with soap; tries not to hum the earworm pop tune the safety ads have drilled into their brains.
Returning to the living room, he sees Sara has moved the groceries to the kitchen. She is standing in the entrance, barring his way.
Michael looks across the room to the sofa. His blanket and sheets are on the arm of the sofa, a tidy rectangle of folded bedding with the pillow placed just so.
He turns back to Sara, but she avoids the obvious question, asking one of her own instead.
“How are mister and missus Park?”
Michael shrugs, wonders where this is going.
“Not so good. Mister Parks says business is bad. People are scared to shop at an Asian market. He didn’t say that, exactly, but that’s what he meant.”
“That’s sad, people abandoning the local shops for Whole-Paycheck. Another casualty of the plague.”
Sara takes three steps to the coffee table and sits down on the edge of it. She leans forward, elbows on her knees, her face framed by her dark hair. Michael looks at her bare feet, pale against the worn Persian rug. She has the sexiest feet he has ever seen. The unfairness of it washes over him like a wave. This woman who was his wife—is his wife?—now only a disinterested roommate. Then she is speaking, but the wave still lingers.
“Sorry, Sara, I got lost for a second.”
“I said, I want to tell you about this dream I keep having. Except it’s not really a dream because I’m not sure if I’m asleep or awake. I’m in bed and the bedroom is dark as a cave, like always. I hear a noise, and it’s bugging me. The noise starts as snoring, so I reach out to poke you, but of course you’re not there. I realize what I’m hearing is the sound of the ocean. It isn’t surf on the beach, but the deep swells of the open sea without any land in sight. The seawater is lapping against a small boat, like a lifeboat, and the boat rises and falls. Then there are creaking noises, and I see you pulling against a set of oars. I’m signaling with my hands, as if I’m giving you directions. You’re watching my hands and pulling at the oars, and each time you pull, we are skimming across the swells so fast it’s like flying.”
Sara pauses. Michael waits for her to continue, but there is only silence.
“How does it feel to be in this small boat all alone on the ocean. Are you frightened? Am I frightened?”
Sara shakes her head and lowers her eyes to the floor. Michael can hear her words, but he cannot see her face.
“No, no fear at all, nothing like that. It all seems very… purposeful. I think that’s right. Not happy, not sad, not scary.”
She raises her head. Her eyes are bright.
“I want to ask you a question.”
He nods his head. Calm and neutral, Michael, calm and neutral. Whatever it is, think before you speak.
“Would you like to go to Paris with me, Michael?”
Calm and neutral careen away, as if he’s been brained with a hammer. His mouth opens and words stutter out before his mind can catch up.
“Paris, sure, yeah, but I mean, the flights and everything, how could we, the restrictions…”
Sara raises a hand to stop his flow of gibberish.
“It’s a simple question. Would you like to go to Paris with me? Don’t think, just answer yes or no.”
“Yes, Sara, I would love to go to Paris with you.”
“Okay, good answer. Now come over here and sit down. I’ll be right back.”
Sara slips past him and through the kitchen doorway. He watches her instead of where he is going and barks his shin on the sharp edge of the coffee table. He curses, flops to the sofa, tries to rub away the burn. Sara’s laptop is sitting on the coffee table in front of him. Before he can wonder why it’s there, Sara reappears carrying a tray.
Sara leans over to place the tray on the table, and Michael becomes lost in her revealed décolletage. He forgets the pain in his shin. She smiles at his stare, slips around the table, and onto the sofa. She waves one hand over the tray with the exaggerated gestures of a games show shill.
“Red wine, cheese, olives, everything we need for an afternoon of walking. This has already had a chance to breathe. Shall I pour you a glass?”
Michael struggles to take in what’s happening. Neutral is long gone, but he hopes he can hang onto calm.
“Sure, yes please, wine would be good.”
He watches her pour, sees the dark red swirl, feels the crimson pounding of his own blood. She lifts the glasses by their stems, hands him one, raises her own in a toast.
“To an afternoon in Paris.”
Michael holds his glass, but does not raise it, does not repeat her toast. Sara is watching him, waiting.
“And later, when the world starts turning again, what then?”
“I don’t have the answer, Michael. When we get to that, if we get to that, I don’t know what will happen. I feel as if the outside world has disappeared and this apartment has become our lifeboat. I need to make the world bigger again.”
Michael smiles, raises his glass.
“To an afternoon in Paris.”
They sip their wine. Sara leans over the laptop. She flips it open, touches a few keys, and a video image resolves on the screen. Her finger hovers over the mouse pad.
“Are you ready to go?”
Michael nods. Her finger taps, and the video begins. Wine in hand, he feels her body lean into his as they begin walking through the entrance to the Louvre.
Fini
You can find In Parentheses here:
That’s it for this week’s edition of Thursday Stories. More stories are coming your way. How will you know when a new story breaks? Glad you asked, Friends. Read On! Drumroll and… Meanwhile, don’t miss any upcoming stories. You can stay tuned for all the latest by following the MEF blog:
https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/whats-new-in-marcos-world-the-blog/
Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred and fifty reviews across Canada, Australia, Europe, the UK, and the USA. Marco’s short story “Power Tools” was nominated for Best of the Web for 2023 and is the title of his latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a ‘Zine called Hotch Potch. In his other life, Marco travels the world with his lovely wife Sabine.
For more reading, how about a collection of short stories? Pas De Deux Confined appears in my short story collection U6 Stories. Grab your copy today!
U6 Stories – Vienna Underground Tales
Every train carries a story.
The U6 is one line of the Vienna underground transit system. The silver and red trains carry stories, many stories. A woman mourns her musical lover, and a man discovers his courage. A Syrian family flees to a fragile new beginning, and a young man helps circus performers during a pandemic. Lovers rediscover each other after decades apart, and a man finds a father he never knew. A contract is broken, and neighbors defend their own. Eighteen tales of love lost and found, of the darkness within us, and the glimmering light that keeps us afloat. Unforgettable characters struggle against the pressures of an impersonal world, and against the burdens they carry within. Welcome, Reader, to the stories of the U6.
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